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< Esato Forum Index > Sony Ericsson / Sony > General > Gizmodo verdict on dumbphones and the W995. Bookmark topic

The article has a bigger problem than whether the author liked the W995 or not (and it was stated that it is an excellent, perhaps the best, dumbphone).

My problem is that the author simply assumes that touchscreen is the future, no, the ONLY future. It most certainly is not, and some manufacturers have realised that touch works well with real keys too.

The irony is that, if Apple announced later today, or in a year from now, a new iPhone with slideout keypad or keyboard - all these people will suddenly start to say how useful the combination is for allowing easy text entry with finger tip control!

That's the bias that makes this article flawed. I really can't see the point it is trying to make. Far better to have done a comparison feature to give the pros and cons of touch vs traditional input. Touch allows large screens, but tricky input when you're using the phone one handed on a commuter train or walking down the street -- the list goes on.

And, I know that not everyone gets on with T9, but Sony Ericsson is one of the few manufacturers that fully complies with the spec and once you master T9 - you can enter text as quick, even quicker, than a normal phone keyboard (which is never quite as quick as a full sized standalone keyboard for a computer).
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Posted: 2009-06-08 11:18:35
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I don't agree that the article is about pushing touchscreens, in fact touch doesn't even get a mention. The point made about the iPhone is that Apple innovated with their UI and produced something new, making best use of today's technology to produce something that simplified the whole process of using a modern feature-packed mobile. Others such as Sony Ericsson, Nokia and the rest need to do the same, but that does not mean copying the iPhone, it means (or I take it to mean) actually applying a little innovation themselves and coming up with interfaces for their similarly-specced phones that can be as simple to use and engaging. Relying on outdated UI conventions that essentially date back to a time when "text messaging" was a new idea on a phone - that's not good enough anymore.

Maybe the future for phones like the W995 is some combination of buttons and touch (and lets not forget that with capacative screens, many of the supposed "disadvantages" of a touchscreen don't exist anymore), maybe it's having a wheel on the side or a lever on the back, maybe it's (shock) something else that we haven't even thought of before? The point is, it's not the menu structure of the T68.

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Posted: 2009-06-08 11:31:14
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But the iPhone is purely touch, and has an excellent UI design that works well with that input method.

I happen to think the SE user interface is pretty decent - and you can't keep changing it for changes sake. People get used to a UI, whether it's Windows or OS X, and wouldn't stand for Microsoft or Apple making radical changes.

When Nokia tried to tweak S60 to make it touchscreen, they ended up with a mix of apps that were designed for touch and those that were for a keypad that have been adapted (mostly with big icons that you can touch). There's little consistency and THIS is where the other manufacturers fall down. What Nokia needed to do was start from scratch, and even the Symbian Foundation OS stuff looks set to continue on from S60 5th Edition.

Android is perhaps the best suited to compete, or webOS, which are both built from the ground up, but I have my doubts as to whether Android will ever really catch up with Apple - especially as the best of Google is available on many/most other platforms. Palm? Well, they could do very well - especially in the USA - if they get their devices right and accept they're going after a different market. Ditto RIM and BlackBerry, who tried (and I think failed) to take on the iPhone with the Storm. I think Android will ship loads of devices (like Nokia did by putting S60 on devices that weren't actually bought by people wanting a smartphone) but although that will look good for marketshare, it won't really make the OS a success - and people may not remain loyal to the OS when another phone comes out at upgrade time (Apple owners will almost certainly stick with Apple no matter what).

For a non-touch (or partial-touch with the Aino) UI, and the fact that SE will soon allow third parties to develop their own user interfaces and applications with Capuchin, I fail to see what the problem is. If you don't want a touchscreen device, why aren't these people moaning about Apple not giving them a product they can use?

For the record; I love my iPhone and am a sucker for fast, fluid, user interfaces that are highly responsive and look good. My I8910 HD is super quick, but has the problems of a mish-mash of applications that don't follow a uniform design, and I know the Satio will suffer the same problems. Nowhere near as bad as Windows Mobile, but still not able to compete with Apple. I've also come to accept that S60 will never offer an amazing choice of interesting applications, as with Apple, and looking on the likes of my-symbian.com at the latest 3/5th Edition stuff shows the usual array of task managers, calendar replacements, alternative web browsers, weather forecast apps and little else. The App Store is packed full of apps, to suit every possible need, and they're priced well too - or even free - unlike the S60 developers that seem to always want big money because sales are generally low, despite the number of users. Ovi Store isn't likely to change that either, in my humble opinion.

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Posted: 2009-06-08 12:39:40
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Yes it is, but nowhere in the article does it suggest the W995 (or other dumbphones) should be purely touch like the iPhone, it just notes that the iPhone took its own direction and created something new that worked.



In all fairness, I think that's the answer of someone who's used a great many phones and has gotten used to all the quirks of a particular interface, so much so that as a seasoned user you don't even notice all the hoops you're jumping through half the time - but that doesn't mean to say something can't be better, or that change is necessarily a bad thing. It doesn't mean that change = iPhone's touch UI either.



I agree completely. I think Nokia were blindsided by this whole thing, and their subsequent efforts with S60/Symbian show just how little they really understand even now about what's happening, and how slowly they're moving towards any kind of solution. I suspect these are the death throes of Symbian, sadly - Android will take its place, and Nokia will take a very real battering in the process, unless they change course soon.
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Posted: 2009-06-08 13:43:00
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I don't see the need to jump through hoops at all with the SE interface. I have used most UIs on handsets, so I am rather spoiled, but I find that it is good for SMS (esp. with conversation mode), email (esp with IMAP PUSH for Gmail), the web (although Opera Mini is even better) and, as long as it's the newest hardware, multimedia playback with no delays.

I suspect people will get bored of the iPhone UI in time and demand more, because people simply get bored and want something new. I think the user interfaces can add transitions, new fonts and other things to inject a bit of life - but the core should remain the same. Newer handsets get newer features, from HD video recording, to integrated BBC iPlayer or whatever - and these are the things that differentiate one handset from another. The form factor is another vital factor; as some people want touch, some want a slider, others a candybar ... and you need that choice.

The Aino, to me, is a fairly good crossover - and the UI will be a lot better than the TouchWiz used by Samsung that disappointed me a little after using the Tocco Ultra Edition for some time.

If SE or Nokia started from scratch with a non-touch UI, would they really come up with something that different? I think this a red herring; an all-new interface could alienate the many existing, loyal, customers and still not steal sales from Apple, especially as the person that wants an iPhone wants THE iPhone, not something trying to mimic it.
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Posted: 2009-06-08 16:11:20
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How many existing loyal customers does SE have to alienate these days? Not enough, certainly.

I really think the red herring here is any hint at mimmicking the iPhone, it's really not about that at all. If anything it's about mimmicking the process that gave birth to the iPhone, and coming up with some original thinking on how people interact with their phones, and how the experience might be improved. We're phone geeks, and all far too conversant with the status quo to actually imagine that very easily, or see a phone like the W995 through the eyes of someone that hasn't necessarily used every other SE interface before it, but SE (and Nokia etc) should be employing people who can do exactly that.

Just ask yourself, when do you think was the last time SE (for example) did actually design a whole new phone interface from scratch, rather than cobbling together a few more extensions to an existing platform, or copying a few more conventions forming elsewhere? Then ask yourself how many new features, functions, and expectations have come to mobile phones in that time... it's not as if we're talking about the design of a spade, what people expect from a mobile now would be almost unrecognisable to the designer of a mobile phone just ten years ago, and yet the kind of interface SE is still using really wouldn't be.

SE must recognise this themselves to some extent, or the A300 interface in the forthcoming Aino wouldn't be messing around with touch as well as keypad, but maybe this is just taking the iPhone lesson too literally and again just cribbing a few new tricks from somewhere else and stapling it on to the same old tired and testing formula... I think they need to do a lot more.

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Posted: 2009-06-08 16:55:22
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I wouldn't want Apple radically changing OS X when they release Snow Leopard, and I am not sure that SE simply axing their UI now for an all-new one is a good idea.

I really don't see what they stand to gain from it. It would be change for the sake of change.

I think they DO need to speed up the hardware and work on the design of the handsets, but the core operating system seems fine to me - and seems pretty easy to use for the average consumer too.

Now, if we were talking about Motorola then this would have been a totally different story!
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Posted: 2009-06-08 17:20:26
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The best thing about the SE UI is the 3x4 Icon layout and the keypad shortcuts. As long as they use a keypad then this is the best way to navigate the menus - minimal scrolling and just a simple keypad press.
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Posted: 2009-06-08 17:32:23
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But surely OS X works well for today's Macs because it was designed from the ground up, not so very long ago, for todays Macs and everything they generally do, right? It's not just Mac OS 9 with a few extra bells, whistles, and extensions, which is pretty much what A200 is to the longstanding SE user interface.



Their market share is dropping, it's almost getting to the point where they've nothing to lose and everything to gain.. as a seasoned mobile phone maker, why shouldn't they draw on their experience and come up with something new and revolutionary? Why leave all the new ideas to the upstarts, particularly when it's been working this badly for them over the last few years?



Moto may be the first to fall, but I think SE and Nokia are pretty much in the same boat, and certainly their performance in the market is starting to reflect that.
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Posted: 2009-06-08 18:08:19
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I thought the Aino was a step in th right direction. And seriously, how do you plan to extensively mod a non-touch phone?? It has to have the grids, has to have a startup screen.
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Posted: 2009-06-08 18:10:58
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